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In Windsor and Essex County’s important agricultural sector, between 8,000 and 10,000 seasonal workers are employed across 176 farms during peak growing season, according to the region’s health unit.

“The system is rotten to the core,” Chris Ramsaroop, a workers’ rights organizer with Justicia for Migrant Workers, told the Star.

“There are fundamental issues with this power imbalance and the fact that workers do not have labour and social mobility and can’t exert their rights in the workplace.”...

But an organization that represents growers who employ thousands of such workers in the large greenhouse sector centred around Leamington and Kingsville lashed out at the UN report, arguing there has been much recent “positive change” in the seasonal agricultural worker and temporary foreign worker programs.

“Many critics still use outdated and misleading language when discussing these programs, ignoring the significant new protections and safeguards that have been added to the program in recent years to address legitimate concerns,” Bill George, chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA) labour committee, said in a statement this week...

Ramsaroop said the UN report’s findings are nothing new. The report reinforces concerns his group and others have raised for decades about the structure of the temporary foreign worker program.

The issue in the agricultural industry, he said, is not with “a few bad apples.” In other words, it’s not a small handful of employers exploiting temporary foreign workers...